Daniel z”l loved my cooking. He had a very hard training in the Palsar Nachal and after a hard week he told me that the guys would motivate themselves to continue by talking about what they would do on the weekends. They would talk about partying, drinking, girls etc. But Daniel would tell me that he would think about the Shabbat food that I would be making and that would help him to continue!

When he was young he would always reward me with big compliments when I would make a meat meal. He loved to cook and was very adventurous in the kitchen. Not everything would turn out delicious but he had a grand time experimenting. He was fearless with spices! As the mother of one girl and 4 boys, I didn’t feel that I did anything wrong and so all my boys helped in the kitchen from a very young age and were indispensable when preparing holiday meals. Today, my grandchildren show up and ask “Gramma, what can we do”.

These are some of the spreads/dips that we would have with our chalah on Shabbat:

Green garlic

Ingredients

1/2 onion

3 garlic cloves

cup of pitted green olives

bunch of parsley

good olive oil

salt

Place the garlic and onion in your food processor and chop by pulsing until the pieces are diced. Add parsley with the olives on top, chop with with the pulse setting until small pieces. Place into bowl and add olive oil and salt to taste

Note: This is a family recipe that we also serve for the simanim on Rosh Hashanah with the bracha “that all of your problems will be ‘shum devar’ or nothing.

Eggplant

Ingredients

2 eggplants cut in half and roasted in oven until soft

1 onion

2 stalks of celery

canola oil

white vinegar

salt

Roast two eggplants in the oven at 360, once the eggplant is soft to touch, scoop the eggplant out of the shell and mash with a fork, add onion and celery that have been minced and sauteied until brown, season with canola oil and vinegar and salt.

Note: My father was born in Romania in 1899 and immigrated to Canada as a 1 year old and this is a variation of the way he made eggplant

Dried tomato dip

Ingredients:

Sun-dried tomatoes

garlic

fresh basil leaves

olive oil

Soak the dried tomatoes in boiled water for a 5-7 minutes. Rinse them off and slice them into small pieces. Place into a dish with olive oil, sliced garlic and sliced basil